tags: Alex Weiser

Thursday, April 16th, 2015

The Momenta Quartet joins with friends for a fascinating evening of games, visions, and sublimities. From Teheran comes Idin Samimi Mofakham’s transcendent Mirage, a slowly unfolding apparition for percussion and trio, while Eric Nathan’s vision for the quartet is heard in the compelling Four to One. Impossibilities are ever-present in Michalis Paraskakis’s Not Yet II, in which a clarinet’s subtle microtonal bendings, blendings, and bleatings challenge the quartet. Oboe and percussion join the fray for Daniel Moreira’s Das Nein-Doch Spiel: a persuasive take on the unwinnable children’s game of yes and no. While Guy Barash’s ambitious String Quartet poses its own challenges. The evening closes with a new work from MATA’s own Alex Weiser.

Friday, February 27th, 2015

Photo Credit: Danielle Baskin

Broad gestures, rich textures, and narrative sweep are hallmarks of the “compelling” (New York Times) music of composer Alex Weiser. Born and raised in New York City, Weiser creates acutely cosmopolitan music combining a keen ear and deeply felt historical perspective with a vibrant forward looking creativity. Running the gamut from dramatic visceral power to thoughtful introspection, Weiser’s compositions often employ a colorful tonal language and repetition to create a discourse which is at once rich and abstract, and yet lucid and grounded.

An energetic advocate for contemporary classical music and for the work of his peers, Weiser co-founded Kettle Corn New Music, a series acclaimed for capturing “all of the prestige” that contemporary classical music has to offer, with “none of the pomp,” (Feast of Music) and is currently a director of the MATA Festival, the “the city’s leading showcase for vital new music by emerging composers.” (The New Yorker)

Weiser has completed residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts, Wildacres, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Millay Colony, and his music has been heard at festivals including Bang on a Can, Norfolk, June in Buffalo, the European American Musical Alliance, Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, and highSCORE. Weiser’s music has recently received awards and support from New Music USA, ASCAP, the Lyrica Chamber Music Society, Iowa State University’s Carillon Festival, the University of Central Missouri, and the Mid Atlantic Foundation for the Arts.

Weiser’s musical education began in earnest while attending Stuyvesant High School writing pieces for the symphonic orchestra there, and studying theory and conducting with Joseph Tamosaitis, and composition with Paul Alan Levi. Weiser then continued his studies at Yale University and New York University where teachers and mentors included Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, Michael Klingbeil, Kathryn Alexander, Martin Bresnick, David Lang, Ingram Marshall, and Christopher Theofanidis.

Thursday, April 17th, 2014

MATA’s second night is a movement into the nearness of origins. The unhewn sounds of em_bruto is our Big Bang: a multimedia soundscape by Brazil’s André Damião Bandeira that tears away perceptions of music and the musical experience; stirrings come forth in Natacha Diels’s exploration of grammatology: A is for Alphabet; the sublime alchemy of Canary Islands’ native Rubens Askenar Garcia Hernandez’s El Puerperio reframes the possibilities of the piano; while a new work from MATA’s own Alex Weiser restores our confidence in resonance and harmony. Capping off the evening is a world premiere MATA commission by Carolyn Chen for ensemble and video (Relationships with Gravity) that restores our faith in reason.